While We’re At It

February 27, 2021 – April 25, 2021

New work by Kayla Anderson, Jurrell Lewis, Cindy Phenix, Anya Smolnikova, and Lauren Wy. The Northwestern Art, Theory, and Practice MFA Class of 2020 present their thesis work, hosted by 6018North.

Due to COVID-19, visits were temporally and spatially distanced for this exhibition. To view the exhibition catalogue online, please download.

On April 3, 2021 the artists shared their work through online artist talks. You may revisit this discussion through a recording on YouTube.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Imagine for a moment that you are a small mouse running through a room, where at first the walls are distant, and then gradually they become closer and closer. While you’re at it, imagine that this is all part of some occult ritual, full of ecstasy and sulfuric slime and the art of rope tying. The images are coming in through your heart and you have to work them out somehow. They are portraits of all the people you love, so you scrawl them on sticky-notes and tuck them in hard to see places. Because wouldn’t it be a tragedy to off yourself just before winning that designer gown on ebay? We heard it’s bad to make suicide jokes, but some of us are Russian. And while you’re at it, you realize that your monstrosity is actually a radical thing. Instead of one mouse, you are many, and from your shared abjection you cobble together a collective strength. Which is some- thing you’ll definitely need if the sun falls down. And while you’re at it, remember the butterfly.

Anya Smolnikova

I am an image and space maker. I believe in the healing power of the creative process. Painting and drawing are my first language[s]. My recent commitment to a movement practice has given an embodiment to my process. My studio work and pedagogy are in constant dialogue, as I seek new ways to share and connect with my students and the world. I was born in the former Soviet Union in 1987. My immigration to the US at the age of 12 was a transformative experience. I believe art is essential to human survival and evolution. It has been to mine.

–Anya Smolnikova

Cindy Phenix

Cindy Phenix works across a multitude of mediums including painting, drawing, and sculpture utilizing a reciprocity of abstraction and figuration to convey complex narratives aimed to deconstruct the hierarchical power structures that govern society and social conduct. Navigating the tenuous relationship between the public and private, Phenix’s subject matter is regularly informed by participatory discussions through which the artist explores and brings awareness to shared experiences. Phenix’s works develop these discussions further by prompting viewers to freely associate meaning from fragmented figuration, intentional ambiguity, and untouched raw materials. Relationships between Phenix’s figures shift effortlessly from contentious to caring in accordance with varied personal perspectives. Monstrous characters, with mutable bodies undefined by gender, appear throughout Phenix’s compositions in defiance of socially constructed systems of power that have historically limited society. Appearing to piece themselves together from aggregated paint gestures, these monsters become figures of power and personal freedom through their abjection.

Cindy Phenix (b. 1989 in Montreal, Canada; lives and works in Chicago) received her MFA in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University in 2020 and her BFA with distinction from Concordia University in 2016. Phenix’s works have been included in many exhibitions: Nino Mier (Los Angeles), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), and Galerie Hugues Charbonneau (Montreal). Phenix’s works are part of private collections in the US and Canada including Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Caisse de dépôt et de placement du Québec and Hydro-Québec. In 2015, Cindy Phenix was listed as one of the top 15 emerging artists for RBC‘s prestigious Canadian Painting Competition.

Lauren Wy

I am an artist currently based in Los Angeles. I spent most of my twenties in music DIY spaces, basements and garages in both Florida and Chicago, and in a pandemic world I am treasuring any and all moments of true intimacy and friendship where and when I can.

I am a drawer and painter whose work investigates the desiring body and fractal narrative as residue of process and color.

My current work is an image-based multi-volume graphic novel saga: AUTODESIRE. AUTODESIRE drawings are process-based erotic rhizomes made from channeled partial narratives both owned and stolen; using layered markings to constantly destroy and re-form, embracing melancholic capaciousness as a healing modality. 

AUTODESIRE attempts a form of world-making where the materiality of the drawings exploits the erotic density of wax color to inset Thanatos/Eros into a geological temporality, leaning on optical blending and the weight of deep marks.

The work is made from Japanese pigments and semi-precious stone-based pigment and oil wax pastel on heavy weight french paper from Arches, the final drawings will be mounted to panel and varnished, while the final collection of 440 drawings will be published as a single novel.

–Lauren Wy

Jurrell Lewis

Jurrell Lewis is a New York based artist whose interests mainly lie in challenging traditional forms of being, models of presentation, and notions of propriety which typically restrict the non-normative being. Put in different language, Jurrell Lewis was born and raised in New York and is particularly uninterested in reproducing the cleanliness, the neatness, and the beauty of those things which are presented to us as good, valuable, or desirable. Instead, he/I is/am interested in something different.

Kayla Anderson

Kayla Anderson is an interdisciplinary artist, a critical writer, a sometimes-curator, a precarious administrator and an aspiring educator. Per’s visual practice is time-based, spanning video and interactive virtual environments as well as performance, installation and publication. Per’s work often explores the ways that subjectivity shapes, and is shaped by, technology. Growing up under the influence of US working-class capitalism, per values art as an arena for non-strategic modes of thinking, feeling, and communing with others. Through art, per practices ways of being with the world: uncovering its curiosities and rubbing up against its contradictions.

*“per” (from “person”) was a non-gendered pronoun proposed by Marge Piercy in the 1976 novel “Woman on the Edge of Time.”

Home image: Chakra Healing Color Light Doorway by Anya Smolnikova – Colored light bulbs, clamp lights, cords, switches, 2021; first image: diptych Upon Your Joyful Shores and Watching the Sunrise / emotional landscapes / the feeling of tears going down into your ear when you’re lying on your back by Anya Smolnikova – Gouche, acrylic and watercolor on paper, 2020 and Walden Pond with Two Snakes by Anya Smolnikova – Gouche, acrylic and watercolor on paper, 2020; second image Distributive Associations by Cindy Phenix – Textile and thread, 2020; third image: BecomingSofa by Lauren Wy – UltraViolet and Maganese Blue, Lamp Black and Opera on Arches Oil Paper, 2019 and Swiper by Lauren Wy – Compose Green, Manganese Blue and Ivory Black on Arches Paper, 2019; fourth image: Faces for a New Drama, Masks for a Tomorrow Today by Jurrell Lewis – Cardboard, Acrylic, Masking Tape, Cloth Ties, 2020. Fifth image: The Waves by Kayla Anderson – Video, 2020 and (5G) Faraday Wear: tent for gathering – Nickel and copper mesh, 2019. Sixth image, left to right: Walden Pond with Two Snakes by Anya Smolnikova – Gouache, acrylic and watercolor on paper 2020; Lessons by Kayla Anderson – projected video program, 2018-2020; Os Olhos do Mar / Eyes of the Sea / Song for a Portuguese fire Sailor / Overlook, Boundbrook Island, Cape Cod, MA by by Anya Smolnikova – Gouache, acrylic and watercolor on paper 2020. Home image and first four photos by Nathan Keay. Final two photos by Useful Art Services.